The auctioning of Trek’s history has begun and boy did Christies underestimate their prices. Not a single item has gone for anything close to their original estimates. For example: two empty Chateau Picard wine bottles (from Nemesis) were estimated to go for $700, in the end they went for $5500…for two empty wine bottles!. Christies and CBS Paramount had made around $250,000 off just the first 50 lots (out of 1000) which was at least double what they were estimating.Other highlights from the first 50 lots (note auction started with TNG films)

End of Day UpdateIt took Christies 9 hours to work though the first third of CBS Paramount’s inventory of Trek memorabilia. All in all it looks like they racked up over $1 Mil for the day, here are some photos and highlights (so far):

Comments

Seeing the Starship Enterprise being sold off at some auction breaks my heart. The costumes, the props, etc. are fine to sell. The Starship… that’s a piece of history which belongs in the Smithsonian, alongside the original.

The only thing more heartbreaking than seeing the TMP Enterprise up there on the auction block is knowing that it’s been in mothballs for years in some undisclosed warehouse. I’m so glad I had the chance to see it in person when I worked on the Motion Picture Director’s Edition… it’s truly a marvelous miniature. I hope it finds a good home… with someone who will care for it and respect it as much as so many of us do.

too bad(they re using cgi)i really admire the art of movie model minitures.I,for one ,can tell the diffence between that and cgi .I think models look better.By the way,I recall Harold Michelson saying the enterprise model cost about one million dollars to build way back in 1978 in an interview in Starlog.Assuming it’s for sale.It would be interesting to see if they get at least that.

Oh.Harold michelson was ,I believe, the production designer for ST;tmp.And at that time 42mil was considered very expensive(as the original budget was 15 mil).It was in this context that the cost of building the starship model was brought up.

Watching this makes me so proud! There are people, make that fans out there keeping Star Trek alive. With Star Trek Online coming up soon and a possible movie in 2008, these are happy times!
I feel like building a Ster Trek model ship. Hmm… I have a Next Generation with fiber optics Enterprise D under my bed. Think I’ll put it together. Modeling sites online have done a really great job with colors and lightings.

I can only hope that Paramount was wise enough to take photographic records of these ships for reference’s sake. This is Star Trek’s heritage at stake. I am sick over this. Someone tell me it’s going to be okay!

It will be okay, Adam. To my ongoing disappointment, later Trek producers rarely included any “historical” props or costumes in Trek. It wasn’t until DS9’s Trials and Tribblations I really felt sure TNG and DS9 were part of the same universe as TOS. Yes it would be nice of some of these items were in museums. But at least they will be in the hands of fans who will treasure them.

This is the next-best thing to putting these items in a specialized museum. The Smithsonian displays something like 1% of its holdings, and the American History museum is closed until 2008. Someone who paid $102,700 for three sides of a cube on a pole bolted to a 4×4 sheet of plywood will damn well protect it. So unless someone’s going to build a Star Trek museum open to the public where these items will be preserved by trained archivists, this is the best way to ensure that they survive. It is much better than being in a warehouse in North Hollywood or a file cabinet at CBS, forgotten and rotting away. You may not see them, but they will be preserved.

P.S. The only real worry I have about the prices these things are going for (besides that I won’t even be able to buy the cap that covers Captain Janeway’s toilet bolt) is that I expect huge amounts of fraud in the next few years. Lots of this stuff is off-the-shelf, e.g. $300 of used Mikasa dinnerware going for $2800; a $19.95 Art Asylum toy with some extra stickers goinf for $14,000. Sounds like easy money for cheats.

We can only hope all things are in good hands. For the price that was paid, I think these things are in collectors hands.
Chris thanks for the link! Great stuff. Here is a link for people who want to get a die cast of the 1701 Enterprise original.

I bought the auction catalogs and went to see the exhibit at Christie’s last weekend. Considering most people paid $25 (or bought the catalog for $90), makes you think how much Paramount could have made all these years just letting people tour their warehouses.

Although there may be some people who will try to sell knock-off props, Christies provides certificates of authentication for all the items. So eBay bidders beware. (BTW, the Art Asylum phaser just has a velcro strip on the handle as it’s only modification)

I feel the same as most about the Ent-A: It should be along side the original in the Smithsonian. Although I wish I could own it myself, we can hope that whomever gets it won’t just put it away, never to be seen again. But I did have a chance to see it in all it’s glory. And though it’s paint scheme has faded somewhat, the majest and workmanship is really impressive. It’s nearly 30 years old itself and looks better than some of it’s more recent incarnations (but I could be biased :-)

If you live in a real loser town with no source of economic income you should persuede the chamber of commerce to buy the “enterprise ” with the very last dollar in their kitty and open up a Star Trek museum featuring the “enerprise” ,and VOILA,instant enconomy!Star Trek fans would come from miles around .

I had seen a documentary on STVI where they talked about how they had to repaint the 1701-A model because the paint had cracked all over the entire skin of the ship. So the ships apparently need maintenance on top of being stored properly. I hope the buyer understands this. But where do you send the ship for a new paint-job? ILM sold off its models department!

Maybe the best scenario we could hope for would be for one of the big casinos to buy the ST-TMP Enterprise and Klingon cruiser for display and attraction. Better than the models disappearing into private rich collector control.

there is nothing to worry about regarding the auction. Selling the old stuff has no relation to the future of the franchise. Star Trek XI does not need any of this stuff. It is my understanding that they have the dimensions and for all the models if they ever need to duplicate any of them digitally, and no future Trek film or TV show would ever use models. And the same is really true for the props and the costumes. One would hope a future Trek TV show would start from scratch and not just re-use all the old stuff.

I think it is a good thing that CBS Para are ‘sharing the wealth’ and I hope that many of these items end up in museums and other displays around the world.

I recall reading that the 1701-A also had to be repainted before STV because it had been on tour and somehow one whole side of it had been repainted plain gray, destroying the detailing. If it had to get painted again for STVI because of cracking, the job done for STV might not have been that great (it’s shot so poorly in STV it’s hard to tell). In any case it never seemed to get its original pearlescent look back, probably because it wasn’t supposed to look new in STVI. Whoever buys it should send it back to olsenart.com and get it restored. No bloody A, B, C, or D. :-)